The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Dick Heller managed to register his revolver with the DC police. This was only the first step in a very long battle to give the second amendment real meaning, and this is a moment which is a stunning defeat for the gun control movement, and Mayor Fenty. It is a good day.
Be sure to tune into Cam’s show at NRANews.com to see their coverage of the event.
Hat tip to Of Arms and the Law
There have been several news articles mentioning the low turnout for registration of firearms in D.C. Considering this is an amnesty, meaning you can bring guns that you might already have down to the police station, and the police will register them and make you legal, I’m not the least bit surprised by the low turnout. Pretty much the only people in DC that have guns right now are police and criminals. The criminals aren’t going to register their guns, and the police don’t have to.
In addition, semi-automatic pistols are a lot more common these days than revolvers, so I suspect the fact that DC is, in contra to the Supreme Court ruling, continuing to ban them also plays into this. DC residents have no where to lawfully aquire a gun, even if they did want to register one. I also suspect many people are figuring this whole game DC is playing with its residents’ second amendment rights might soon be coming to an end. You can bet if I lived in DC, and stored my guns out of state, I would not be eagar to bring them into The District under the current unconstitutional framework set up by DC City Council.
I’m rather shocked to find that a police officer was willing to break one of the cardinal rules of safe gun handling: “All guns are to be treated as if they are loaded.” This means that you do not leave one in a room to see what kids do with them. I’m also incensed at this:
The gun was placed in a toy crate and the kids were allowed into the room, one group at a time.
I don’t know about you guys, but my kids’ toy crate isn’t a place I’d think to store a gun. Is it possible that perhaps the kids thought it was a toy gun, rather than a real Glock 32? I mean, even if I saw a gun in a toy crate, my first instinct would not be “real gun” though you can bet I’d investigate a realistic looking gun in a toy container.
Delaine Mathieu, and Seargant Fryar should be ashamed of themselves. You can teach adults to safely store firearms without breaking the rules of safe gun handling by putting a gun in the kids’ toybox. You wouldn’t think a bunch of internet gun nuts would have to point that out to them.
UPDATE: The Brady Campaign is also promoting unsafe gun handling with children. There is no greater good excuse for the ignoring the four rules. The rules exist to prevent accidents, and to the extent that the shooting community has drilled these concepts into the heads of gun owners, accidents have declined.
UPDATE: Apparently this journalist wasn’t the first rocket scientist to think “Kids and Guns. Let’s put them together and see what happens!”
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting (thank God) delegate to the House for Washington D.C. wants people to just say no to “the gun culture”.
As registration of guns began today, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) called on residents to refuse to buy into the gun culture by just saying no. The Supreme Court has spoken, the District has acted and now it is up to citizens to do their part, she said. “If the great majority of residents, who supported our gun ban, meant it, now is the time to show it. I challenge every resident not to buy a gun. Don’t buy into the gun culture in our streets by bringing it into our homes with the gun you buy. It’s up to us now.”
I don’t think Norton has the first clue about the “gun culture”. You see, I am from this culture, and so are many of the people I know. Yet we are all good citizens. What Norton is basically saying is that if you buy a gun you’ll either end up shot or end up a criminal. She’s basically saying that DC residents are too irresponsible and criminal to own guns.
Someone pointed out that The Brady Campaign managed to corner the market on Carry Permit Holders as a search term. Well, not we in the gun blogosphere are getting our google-fu on. Watch as we drive them down the list! Robb is also getting his carry permit holder google-fu going.
Over at Joe Huffman’s.  To be somewhat fair, though it doesn’t diminish the point, a lot of these folks are just anti-American, and express that through anti-gun attitudes. Hell, I’m almost convinced one of the only reasons Canada’s gun laws are worse than ours is because having less restrictive gun laws would be too American and we can’t have that in Canada.
Bitter is looking for ideas as we’re looking to get some organization together in southeastern, PA just in time for the elections. The problem with southeastern PA is that no one is doing anything. We have gun owners here, but unlike the guys out west, who have their s%$t together, we don’t have a game plan. Head over to Bitter’s an offer some suggestions.
Bitter has been going through and looking to find all the gun clubs and shooting ranges in my county, and the number is astounding. There’s just no way that a guy like Pat Murphy should be able to win here. In fact, he did not win in Bucks County, he won by virtue of the fact that Pennsylvania’s 8th congressional district contains parts of Montgomery County and Philadelphia, which voted overwhelmingly for Murphy.
Patrick Murphy decided to sign on to a ban on many common semi-automatic firearms, and I have decided to organize the gun vote in Bucks county to defeat him. I will not stop until every gun owner in this county knows what HR1022 would do, and that their congressman favors it. In the intelligence community, this kind of reaction is known as blowback, but I think it works in politics too.
Alan Gura talks about the effect Heller is meant to have on DC’s registration system.
There are significant, practical limits on the number of arguments that can be put together in one lawsuit. In our case, we chose to focus on the handgun and functional firearms bans – and that was plenty work for the courts to consider.  Litigants do not have unlimited space in the briefing, or unlimited time in argument, and there is a significant strategic advantage – as we have demonstrated – in keeping constitutional litigation focused and narrow.
I’m hoping he’s not, but suspect he is, getting grief from gun people about how Heller should have fixed this whole thing. One thing Alan is going to learn about gun owners, if he hasn’t already, is that many of us are never happy, or grateful much. Be sure to read his whole post.
I played sideline mallets in high school band. Yep, I’m a band geek, and still have the jacket and letter to prove it. Someone must have put some video up on YouTube, because you can see me, 17 friggin years ago, in a high school band competition. I know it’s a competition because Nov 2 1991 was a Saturday, and Fridays were football games, and Saturdays were competitions.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-oxWrjAhZM[/youtube]
On the sideline mallets, I’m the second in from the right. The girl one in from the left I had a horrible crush on. The first song in our show was “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin, followed by “Take the A-Train” by Duke Ellington. I seem to remember the other one was the theme from Twin Peaks, then another bit called “Va Va Voom”. The funny thing is, I think if you put me in front of a set of mallets today, I could probably still play bits of that show.
From band geek to gun nut. It’s funny sometimes the directions life goes in. The really funny thing is, I still enjoy competition, even though I suck about as much at shooting as I did at sideline precussion.
I was pretty happy that the only thing about Barack Lonely Hearts Club Obama that’s being exposed here is his political negatives.